Stephen Kellogg offers up the best of him at Club Passim

By Ed Symkus, Correspondent

Tuesday

Dec 19, 2017 at 11:00 AMDec 21, 2017 at 3:29 PM

Stephen Kellogg’s singing-songwriting career, one that fits comfortably at the junction of folk and pop and country, was likely borne out of the contradictory listening experiences he had as a kid. There was quite a divergence of styles between the record collections of his sister and his father, and Kellogg freely roamed through them. His dad was into Cat Stevens; his sister favored Mötley Crüe.

Kellogg, who enjoyed a strong decade of success as part of his band The Sixers before he went off on his own about five years ago, is set to do a solo show at Club Passim on Dec. 29. He spoke about some of those early influences and his first thoughts of becoming a performer by phone from his home in Connecticut.

“On the one hand, there was my dad’s stuff,” he said. “I listened to it and I internalized it. I used to go to sleep to ‘Tea for the Tillerman’ for pretty much every night of third grade. But the moment when I thought, ‘Oh my, I want that job!’ was at my first concert, when my sister took me to see Whitesnake. I was 10 and I remember walking in and [lead singer] David Coverdale was slinging the microphone stand around. I can’t say that I thought it was an achievable goal, but that definitely was a big moment when I went, ‘Wow, that looks like a lot of fun!’”

It wasn’t long after that that his parents, seeing him singing and playing air guitar around the house, bought their neighbor’s guitar and gave it to Kellogg for Christmas. By the time he was 14, he was in his first band, Silent Treatment.

“In that band I wanted to be Tesla or The Black Crowes, and everyone else wanted to be Queensryche,” he said. “So, we had this kind of modern metal vibe, with my version of socially conscious ‘damn the man’ rock ’n’ roll lyrics.”

The band, as high school bands tend to do, broke up. But before, many years down the road, Kellogg joined up with the guys who would become the Sixers, he went solo, singing his own songs, learning how to do a show without other musicians surrounding him.

“I’m always looking for people to share the music with,” he said, “because that’s kind of where I came from. But when there’s no band, I’m still going to play, regardless. It’s hard and scary to stand up there alone with a guitar, especially when you’re starting out and don’t necessarily have songs you can count on or facility on your instrument that you can count on. That was terrifying, but it was the only option.”

He played and sang on his own, he made records on his own, then he fell in with Kit Karlson, Boots Factor, and Sam Getz, and the Sixers emerged. Cut to six albums and almost a decade later, and the band took a hiatus (which they’re still on).

“I had to reinvent myself, again, when it was over,” said Kellogg. “Before the Sixers, I was still figuring out who am I, what kind of artist am I? When I met them, it felt like, ‘Well, you’re the guys I’ve been looking for all this time.’ It was like I was finally able to start running down the road of discovery of what it was going to be. When the Sixers split up, I thought, ‘What’s the silver lining of this going to be?’ I decided that I would recommit to being unapologetically, fearlessly focused on my music, on the stuff that really moves me in my heart. I had a couple of rough tours early on, but I’ve had many great ones since.”

From those seeds has emerged, among others, his 2015 double album “South, West, North, East” and this year’s double live album “Tour de Forty,” which he’s still supporting on the road. The Passim appearance is part of the current tour.

“I play there every couple of years or so,” said Kellogg. “A half-hour documentary called ‘Last Man Standing,’ about my balance of work and family, was made a couple of years ago. A film crew followed me around, and I was trying out some new material at a Passim show. A bunch of that ended up in the final cut.”

At the upcoming gig, Kellogg intends to continue his practice of doing a completely different set every night.

“There are so many songs now, and none of them are bona fide radio hits, so it’s not like you HAVE to play anything,” he said. “I just wake up in the morning and think, ‘What do I need to say today?’ That’s what the set lists are built around.”

That ties right into his promise that audience members will be treated to some songs they’ve never heard before.

“I have some new ones that are waiting to be recorded,” he said. “And especially when I’m solo, it’s a chance to try out new material and see how it feels.”